From scrap to Manufacturing: Where Recovered Metals Go?
The Journey from Vehicle to Raw Material
When a vehicle reaches the end of its useful life, it doesn’t simply disappear. Instead, it embarks on a journey, transforming it from scrap into valuable raw materials that feed directly back into manufacturing of other products.
Before any metal can be recovered, the vehicle undergoes the careful removal of hazardous fluids, batteries, and components that could contaminate the recycling. Following this, the vehicle is dismantled and the valuable parts and components are removed for reuse.
What scrap remains then moves to a shredder. Here, the vehicle is reduced to fist-sized fragments in seconds. The separated metals then enter downstream processing, where they’re prepared for reintroduction into manufacturing.
Types of Metals Recovered from Scrap Vehicles include:
- Ferrous Metals (Steel and Iron). The bulk of recoverable metal from any vehicle consists of ferrous materials which are primarily carbon steel, cast iron, and structural steel.
- Non-Ferrous Metals. Vehicles also contain significant quantities of valuable non-ferrous metals including aluminium, copper, brass, zinc, and lead.
How is Scrap Metal used After Leaving the Yard?
Modern vehicle shredders are engineering marvels, capable of processing entire cars in under a minute. These machines achieve fragment sizes recover the most amount of material, with. Ferrous metals are often successfully recovered at a rate that typically exceeds 95%
Construction and Infrastructure
This area represents the largest consumer of recycled ferrous metals in the UK. Recovered steel is often used for application in construction, for example it can be transformed into rebar for concrete reinforcement, structural beams for buildings, and sheet steel for roofing and cladding.
Automotive and Transport Manufacturing
Remarkably, recovered metals often return to automotive supply chains. Here, they’re recycled into steel for body panels, structural components, and die casting for engine parts which completes a genuine circular loop.
Electrical and Energy Industries
Electric and energy companies rely heavily on recovered copper for cables and transformers, whilst the renewable energy industry incorporates recycled metals into wind turbines and solar panel mounting structures.
Environmental Benefits of Metal Recycling
Recycling metals provides lots of environmental benefits. Recycling scrap metals reduces the carbon footprint as it is more environmentally friendly than producing metal from scratch.
A large source of scrap metal in the UK is from cars as there’s lots of metals in the bodywork, interior and engine bays. Should a car fit the criteria to be scrapped, there are specialised metal recycling companies like us here at Williams Metals Recycling. We provide car collections for scrap metal recycling across the Wiltshire area.
Get in touch!
We collect just about anything that is metal across the Wiltshire area including Tidworth, Pewsey, Andover and Marlborough. To give you an idea, we’ll take scrap metal, collect cars, site cleared metals and other recyclable metals. For over 35 years, Williams Metal Recycling has been offering a superb scrap metal service. As a family run team, we take pride in our expertise and experience and strive to give you the best possible prices for your scrap metal.
If you’d like to make sure we can remove and recycle your scrap metal be that a car or otherwise, contact us today with the details